Tag Archives: civilisation

The historian and former banker, Benedikt Koehler, in his lecture on ‘Early Islam and the Birth of Capitalism’ appears at a loss to explain what happened to the critical inquiry and dynamic underpinning that was the distinctive feature of the Early Islamic zeitgeist (watch from 49.05).

A young Hamza Yusuf once remarked bitterly in an old lecture that he was trying to calculate the exact day when all the Muslims collectively got together and – crank! – ‘switched their brains off ‘. (I will try and locate the exact lecture in due course.) Despite his frustrations in the joke, this notion – the implication – posits the ‘Closing of the Gates of Ijtihad’ scenario. We will explore this train of thought in due course (see below).

But what is being probed is the issue that where once the Muslim world was in a position of power, leading the world in sciences, economics and culture, now the same world has fallen to an all-time low. So what happened?

This is the original [PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN] speech that the President had prepared prior to when the Twin Towers came down on September 11th, 2001, but delivered soon after they came down and which was written 12 years later, give or take a decade:

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President Pro Tempore, Members of Congress, and fellow Americans:

We have seen the courage of passengers, who allegedly rushed murderers to save others on the ground (which certainly is a heroic act, that mustn’t be belittled – even if the official story isn’t true) passengers like an exceptional man named Todd Beamer. And we pray to God for him and his family – swearing ‘what we know not what’ should the government be telling us the littlest of white lies. Like, that their plane wasn’t shot down or some other such ‘need to know basis’ from more classified sources. We all know how our government, “Big Brother, Loves us”… We all know how we truly found the weapons of mass destruction they specifically told us was there in Iraq, did we not? So with that in mind, would you please help me to welcome his wife, Lisa Beamer, here tonight. [Applause] Continue reading →

Orson Welles played with the American public on radio in 1938 and made them believe an alien invasion from outer space (as inspired by the fictitious ‘War of the Worlds’) was actually taking place. There was mass panic and hysteria. Now we in Britain1 laugh our heads off, exclaiming: “How stupid were these Americans!”